Senior Backend Engineer — (Java / Spring Boot / GCP)

Senior Backend Engineer — Founding Team (Java / Spring Boot / GCP) — Freelance via Shakers

We are partnering with a fast-moving company at the intersection of healthcare and AI to hire a Senior Backend Engineer as a founding team member of their microservices platform on GCP.

This is not a traditional corporate role. You will own services end-to-end, take part in critical system design decisions, and operate inside a fully AI-driven development workflow (planning → generation → review → refinement).

What you will do

• Design, build and operate scalable backend services with Java + Spring Boot in a microservices architecture using Kafka and Redis.
• Build and evolve APIs, data models and workflows; deploy on GCP with Kubernetes.
• Guide an AI-powered development process: structured planning, generating, reviewing and refining AI-produced code.
• Contribute to CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions.
• Take real ownership: decisions, outcomes, scalability and reliability of the services you build.

Must-have

• 3+ years of professional backend experience with Java and Spring Boot.
• Hands-on experience designing microservices with Kafka (messaging) and Redis (caching / data structures).
• Production experience on GCP with Kubernetes and CI/CD (GitHub Actions).
• Proven use of AI coding tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex or similar) for planning, generation and validation.
• Strong ownership mindset, comfortable with ambiguity and rapid iteration.
• Fluent English.

Nice to have

• Event-driven architecture expertise.
• Experience with healthcare data systems.

Setup

• 100% freelance, full-time dedication.
• Onsite in Lisbon
• Long-term engagement, founding-team scope.